


turning your orbit around

by snaredrum



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, No Incest, because i'm gonna be honest - i do not know where im going, buckle up it's daemon au time, characters and tags to be added as they appear, starts when they're kids but will go up through s1, you don't have to have read hdm to read this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28652475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snaredrum/pseuds/snaredrum
Summary: Her siblings' dæmons all took their forms when they were kids, but Vanya is twenty-nine years old and her dæmon is still unsettled.She tries not to think about how much that scares her.
Relationships: Vanya Hargreeves & The Hargreeves
Comments: 29
Kudos: 79





	turning your orbit around

**Author's Note:**

> heyo i am a huge sucker for dæmon aus
> 
> if you don't know anything about dæmons, that's fine! the gist is they're an outward manifestation of a person's soul, when the person is young they can shapeshift but as they get older (usually around tweens/early teens) they end up settling into one permanent form that best represents the person. additionally, the Big Rule is you do not ever touch someone else's dæmon. 
> 
> also i'm sick of having to say this but if you ship incest do not read my fics. they are not for you. get outta here
> 
> title comes from jesus, etc. by wilco

Vanya was twelve when she left the mansion for the first time.

The Umbrella Academy’s first mission commenced in a flurry of movement, with all the members rushing to get in position and Reginald impatiently ushering Vanya up the building across from the bank so he could monitor their actions. It was a bitterly cold day in early spring, and the wind easily cut through Vanya’s heavy coat as she left the warmth of the stairwell and walked out onto the roof. Her dæmon, Hephaestus, took the form of a mouse and burrowed into the folds of her scarf.

Dad said nothing to her as he pulled out a telescope and fixed it on the windows of the bank. This was the first moment of stillness Vanya had had since being corralled into the car this morning, and since she herself had no telescope and was blind to the actions of her siblings, she decided to get her first good look at the outside world. Down below, the sidewalk teemed with people: news crews, SWAT teams, and morbidly curious bystanders pressed up against the police barricades.

And for every person, there was a dæmon.

People had dæmons, of course. That was something she knew logically. Her siblings all had one, and so did she, and every book she’d ever read had a description of each character’s dæmon. But until now, looking down at all the dogs and cats and reptiles and birds and other animals Vanya couldn’t even identify, it had never really struck her just how odd it was that Dad didn’t have one.

None of the adults she knew did. Grace was a robot, though, so that made sense, and Pogo was a chimpanzee so it followed that he wouldn’t have one either. But Dad, for all his intimidation and grandeur, was ultimately just a person – by all means, he should have one, but he didn’t. And as soulless as he acted, he wasn’t empty. He didn’t feel…off, like the people who were cut away from their dæmons in the books Vanya read.

The only indication Hephaestus gave that he was wondering the same thing was the way he curled up even further into her neck.

Shattering glass snapped Vanya out of her thoughts and she watched a man fly from a bank window, landing heavily on the stone steps outside. After a second of writhing, his dæmon – a bobcat – dissolved into nothingness. The sight of it disturbed Vanya more than she could put to words. The knowledge that he was dead settled like a stone in her stomach; against her neck, she felt Hephaestus shudder.

Hostages flooded out of the building in a frenzy a few minutes later, their dæmons equally frantic. None of the dæmons had been restrained, she noticed, even though all of the hostages’ hands had been bound together with tape. It struck Vanya as curious - why not? Some of the dæmons were big, dogs and wildcats and birds of prey, things that could easily cause damage. It seemed to her that neutralizing them would be a priority. And it would have the added advantage of incapacitating the hostages, too. Whenever Dad touched Hephaestus – or any of their dæmons, for that matter – the pain was incredible, more intimate and devastating than any other punishment he doled out. Even if he wasn’t hurting Hephaestus, just the sensation of someone else’s hand on her dæmon was grating and horrible, like if the sound of nails on a chalkboard hurt your soul and not your ears.

It wasn’t like she _wanted_ the robbers to hurt the hostages, not at all. She just thought it was weird that they didn’t.

She had gotten so distracted by her ruminations on dæmons that she had almost forgotten why she was here in the first place. She had almost, _almost_ been able to ignore the biting alienation that had been crushing her all day, ever since Dad had rung the mission alarm for the first time.

But it all came flooding back in like a tidal surge when her siblings exited the bank together and gathered on the steps. Their confident grins were bright enough that Vanya could see them from all the way up on the roof. They lined up in alphanumeric order, Numbers One through Six and Dæmons A through F. Luther waved to the crowd and Achilles sat proudly beside him, her head held high. She was the easiest to see, having taken the form of a huge St. Bernard. Diego brandished a knife in front of his chest, holding it awkwardly with a plastic smile, Gilgamesh perched on his shoulder as a peregrine falcon. By contrast, Allison and Aoede looked incredibly in their element, Allison flashing confident smiles to the cameras with Aoede draped across her shoulders as a lynx. Klaus and Persephone were as casual as ever, with Persephone sitting on his head as a cockatiel, Klaus himself leaning his elbow on Five’s shoulder. Five wasn’t shrugging him off, too busy looking proud of himself. E paced back and forth on the step in front of him as a cheetah. Ben stood with his head down, covered in blood; Chiara, in the form of an ermine, poked her head out from behind his legs. As miserable as he looked, though, a smile kept breaking through his façade, his excitement impossible to quell.

And Vanya was up on the roof, shivering, watching her siblings bask in the glory. Hephaestus, still mouse-shaped, trembled from the cold.

God, she wanted to be down there.

She glanced at her father from the corner of her eye; his attention was still on the Academy. She took a deep breath. “Why can’t I go play with the others?” she asked softly.

“We’ve been through this before, Number Seven.” He lowered the spyglass but kept looking straight ahead. “I’m afraid there’s just nothing special about you.” Now he turned his head to face her, fixing her with a stern glare. The ire in his eyes, the hard set of his jaw – his exasperation at having to take his focus away from the Academy to explain something so obvious to her was clear. She couldn’t stand meeting his eyes anymore, and looked back down at the scene below.

“Oh,” was all she said. Her father didn’t respond, having already returned his attention to her siblings.

Hephaestus poked his head out from Vanya’s scarf. He squinted down at the scene below for a second, then morphed into a kestrel when his mouse eyes proved too weak and fluttered to sit on the low rooftop wall.

Eventually Reginald went and gave his press statement and officially concluded the mission, and Vanya wasn’t sure which hurt worse: that he had said that he’d adopted six extraordinary children, or that in their excitement, none of her siblings talked to her on the drive back home.

***

As it turned out, Achilles hadn’t simply chosen the form of a St. Bernard – she had settled.

Upon returning home, the entire family crowded in the foyer to observe the novelty of the Academy’s first settled dæmon. She was giant, complementing Luther’s status as the tallest sibling. Her brown and white fur looked incredibly soft, but her size and gleaming teeth made it impossible to forget her strength. She and Luther both looked overjoyed – he stood with a straight back, shoulders squared, hands clasped behind him and a proud smile on his face, and she stood at attention directly to his right. They looked to Reginald, waiting for him to comment.

Dad pressed his lips into a tight line, nodding shortly in approval. “Let this be a lead that you all follow,” he said, turning to the other children. “Number One and A have achieved sophistication today. The rest of you have no excuse for your continued immaturity.”

He didn’t look at Vanya when he said it, but she shrunk back anyway.

***

“Did you see the look on Dad’s face earlier?” Five asked Vanya that night. He had blinked into her room and sat on her bed without preamble, E flitting about his head in the shape of a hummingbird. Neither of them had chosen a name yet, but they assured Vanya that they would pick one with Mom soon. “He looked _so_ pissed. He was probably hoping Achilles would settle as a German shepherd or a Doberman pinscher, something all scary and aggressive. She looks too dopey as a St. Bernard.”

Vanya quietly agreed. Hephaestus didn’t say anything.

“Did you see the look on Diego’s face, though?” she asked with a grin, but kept her voice low – she didn’t want anyone who might be in the hallway to overhear. “I think he’s mad that Achilles settled before Gil.”

Five laughed and leaned back on his hands, the bed creaking softly beneath his shifting weight. “Oh, he’s _livid_.”

“So is Gil,” E added. She had landed on Five’s head and was making a nest in his hair.

He waved his hand above his head. “Hey, get out of there.” E laughed but obliged, flying down to perch on his knee. Five rolled his eyes and returned his attention to Vanya. “I hope we don’t all settle in number order, though. I don’t want Dad to have that satisfaction.”

Vanya glanced down at Hephaestus, who was curled up beside her as a cat. “Me too,” she murmured.

A crease formed between Five’s eyes. “You won’t settle last,” he said, and Vanya flushed at having been so easily read. He continued, “You’re too mature for that. My money’s on Klaus.”

She huffed a laugh out her nose. “Do you really think so?”

“Of course.” He looked offended that she would think he would say something he didn’t mean. “You or me will probably be next. Then…Ben, I think, then Allison and Diego, _then_ Klaus. That’s my bet.”

Vanya looked around her tiny room, trying and failing to hold back a smile. “Hm, I don’t have any money to bet you with.”

Five rubbed his chin. “Good point. How about the loser does the winner’s homework?”

She pretended to think about it before reaching out her hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal.” Her legs were folded beneath her, mirroring Five’s position – Hephaestus morphed into a sparrow, fluttering onto Vanya’s knee and sitting across from E.

“Hope you two enjoy doing English worksheets,” E taunted, and Hephaestus laughed.

***

Vanya was thirteen when Five ran out the door and never came back.

He had been talking about time travel more and more in the months after that first mission. “If I’m old enough to fight assholes with guns, I’m old enough to practice my temporal jumps,” he’d say.

“Dad says it’s too dangerous,” she would counter, but he would shake his head.

“It’s part of my powers, it’s what my body is literally made to do! It’s not any more dangerous than spatial jumping.”

And it would be difficult for her to argue with that. So she wouldn’t, she would just let him continue ranting about his potential and how their father was underestimating him. E would take the form of something small and fast and would run or fly around at a pace as rapid as Five’s words while Hephaestus got dizzy watching her.

It made Vanya worry. It made her worry so much. She wanted to trust Five, but the idea of time travel was so daunting. What if he got hurt? What if the attempt damaged his body, his mind?

And what if it worked? It going well intimidated her just as much. She was afraid he would find a better time, a happier time, and leave her behind in the here and now.

A couple days before he left, when they were studying together in the library and everyone else was off doing who knows what, she hesitantly asked, “Could I go with you?”

He didn’t have to ask where; he had finished another rant just a few minutes before. Scrunching his face up in that way he did when he was thinking, he drummed his fingers along the spine of his book. “I’d have to run some tests first.”

“She’s able to come with us on spatial jumps,” E said half a second before Vanya could open her mouth to make the same point. She had been lounging on the table as a ferret, but now sat upright to talk to Five. “I don’t see why temporal jumps would be any different.”

Vanya pointed at E, grateful for the help. “I don’t even get motion sick from the spatial jumps anymore,” Vanya added. They used to nauseate her so badly she would gag, but over the years she’d jumped with him enough to have built up a tolerance. She was very proud of that fact – none of their other siblings could say the same.

But Five shook his head. “I just have to make sure it’s safe to time travel with other parties first.”

“So you admit it’s dangerous?”

He furrowed his brow. “For you, yes! Not for me. Like I’ve said many, many times now – my body was designed for this. You may not get sick from jumps _anymore_ , but I never have at _all_.” Now he was bouncing his leg in addition to drumming his fingers. “You’re not like me, though –“

“I know that,” she muttered. She started chewing on the end of her pencil, her own form of nervous fidgeting.

His eyes widened and then shut as he groaned. “Ugh, no, I don’t mean like _that_ , I mean that nobody’s like me. Nobody but me is built for time travel. If I take you with me without knowing more, you could get hurt! Or killed, or lost forever in time. There are so many ways for it to go wrong, it’s not worth the risk.”

“And you don’t realize that’s how we feel?” a thin, raspy voice asked. Hephaestus was a gargoyle gecko on the table, his unblinking eyes boring into Five’s.

The others were jolted out of their argument. Five froze in his fidgeting, his fingers rigid on his book’s spine. E looked back and forth and back and forth between Five and Hephaestus, but Vanya just stared at her dæmon. He stared right back.

The sound of shuffling fabric brought her attention back to Five – he had stood up and was gathering his study materials in his arms.

Vanya’s heart plummeted. “Wait, no, Five –” she pleaded, but he was already walking toward the door. His head was bowed, but she caught a glimpse of his face as he passed her. She had expected him to look angry, furious even, but he didn’t. Not at all. He just looked…shocked. Dismayed, maybe. It didn’t matter though – he still headed out the room, E hot on his heels.

The moment he was gone, Vanya snapped her head back to Hephaestus. He was still gecko-shaped, his gaze still inscrutable.

“What was that about?!” she demanded. Her voice came out louder than she had intended.

He tilted his head. “It’s the truth. I know you had to be thinking it too.” He sounded confused, like he didn’t understand why she was reacting this way.

She covered her face with her hands, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes to fight the tears beginning to burn behind them. “I know, it’s just – you can’t just _tell_ him that, you know how he gets.”

A beat. “But it’s how we both feel.”

Her hands fell back to the table; the loud _thunk_ against the wood felt too big in the large, empty library, as did her incredulous scoff. “That doesn’t mean we should say it to him! Especially not like that! You don’t talk all day, you don’t say a single word _all day_ , and then you decide to speak up just to say _that_?”

She was shouting by the end. The silence of the library enveloped them as soon as she finished, her words ringing in her ears – the only sounds left were her heavy, ragged breaths as she worked past the lump growing in her throat. She shouldn’t have let herself get so riled up, she knew she had bad anxiety even with the medication. And she had been so loud – what if someone was out in the hall and had overheard? Her cheeks already burned from the potential embarrassment.

Hephaestus was infuriatingly indecipherable, his large eyes with their slit pupils impossible to read. He held her gaze for a few agonizing seconds before lowering his eyes back toward the table. “I’m sorry.”

_Fuck_. The anger dissipated just as quickly as it had arrived, leaving her feeling deflated and ashamed. She started to raise one hand off the table, but changed her mind and lowered it back down. Guilt sat heavily in her chest. “No, no, I’m sorry, really.” She ran her fingernail up and down the spiral binding of her notebook. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

It took so long for him to answer that she was about to give up hope when he murmured, “It’s okay.”

In the days and months and years to come, she would be grateful that that hadn’t been the last conversation she’d had with Five. He approached her the morning after their fight, he even apologized to her – well, as close to apologizing as Five ever got. “I’ll take you third,” he told her. “The first time I jump through time will be for me to get used to the feeling, and the second time will be a test run taking organic matter with me. Probably a banana.”

She giggled, more relieved that he was talking to her than anything else. “A banana?”

“Humans and bananas have a lot of genetic similarities,” he said matter-of-factly. E nodded sagely. “If that goes well, then the third time will be with you.”

“Promise?”

He smiled brightly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course.”

He stormed out of dinner one day later. He didn’t come back that night. Or the next. Or the next. Everyone worried, but not like her. She stopped sleeping, instead standing sentinel by the street-facing windows in the front room all night so she could see him coming and open the door for him. She left the lights on so he would know they were there, and always had a sandwich ready for him in case he was hungry. It was impossible to hide how panicked she was feeling when Hephaestus, who was usually so languid, couldn’t stay still for longer than two seconds.

After a week Dad found out that she was leaving her room at night and punished her for it, locking her in at lights out and only unlocking it right before breakfast. The finality of the slamming door and clicking lock had her screaming into her arm – she burned to be screaming at her father instead but she knew it would just make her punishment worse. He might never let her out.

Hephaestus was holding himself back from slamming into the door for the same reason. He ran around the room in furious circles, shifting forms every few seconds – a greyhound, a shrike, a squirrel.

Vanya sat on her bed and watched him as he almost knocked over her music stand. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t _fair_ , she was the only one who cared at all that Five was gone, otherwise they’d all be downstairs with her, or better yet going out and helping her look for him. But no, now she was locked in this room – this tiny room, she hated small spaces but her room was usually okay because she could leave it if she wanted but now she didn’t have that option and the walls felt so close she could barely breathe –

She burst into tears. Where had he gone? Where was he now? Why wasn’t he back? Why did he leave her here? The questions swirled around in her head like leaves in a hurricane as she pulled her legs up to her chest and sobbed into her knees.

The bed dipped under a sudden pressure and she whipped her head up. It was Hephaestus, of course it was Hephaestus – she chided herself for her brief flash of hope that Five had blinked into her room (the disappointment crushed her anyway). He stood on the mattress as a pine marten and took a slow step forward, blinking at her; she accepted the unspoken invitation and pulled him into her arms, hugging him close to her chest. “He promised,” she sobbed, tears streaming down her face and into his fur. “He _promised_.”

Hephaestus nuzzled into her neck and didn’t say a word.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please leave a kudos/comment if you enjoyed, it really helps with my motivation :P
> 
> acknowledgements:  
> thank you to swishy for the idea of vanya's dæmon not settling until she's an adult and for five's dæmon's (eventual) name. thank you to myriad for idea of diego's dæmon's settled form. thank you to james for both helping me work through ideas and proofreading. and a HUGE thank you to were for so much of this, literally this au wouldn't be possible without them!


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